The complexity of products has continued to grow as new technologies and industries are born. Due to this growth, businesses have increased the use of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and visualization tools to design, develop, and manufacture these products. These tools allow a user to not only design a component, but also display and interact with an image of the component. The dynamic and interactive nature of these tools provide immediate visual feedback to the user regarding attributes of the component as its design is altered.
Because design and manufacture businesses alike have recognized the benefits of CAD and visualization, they are becoming standard tools used during product development. Additionally, these businesses have expanded the capabilities of such tools by implementing Product Data Management (PDM) technologies. PDM is aimed at collaborating engineering data associated with a designed product within a dispersed business organization. Adopting the use of the Internet, web-based visualization tools, and PDM enables a business to share product development data among teams of people distributed across several remote organizations. This combination, known as “collaborative Product Definition management” (cPDm), enables a business to take advantage of growing e-commerce technologies to manage the development of components across a distributed organization from design to production.
An overview of visualization techniques and cPDm methodologies is disclosed in “Visualizing Product Information,” April 2001, by John MacKrell. This reference describes the advantages and capabilities of combined visualization and PDM technologies for businesses. For instance, MacKrell discloses the ability for visualization systems to allow a business entity to markup and interact with a visual design that has been lightened from a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) format to a less complex web-based format. Further, the reference discusses how a visualization system should be able to provide various types of data formats of a designed component for different entities within a business organization. For example, a business' shop floor may require 2D and 3D visual and textual design data formats, while the front office of the same business may only require textual formats.
Although the benefits of visualization systems are typically exploited by the internal operations of a organization, the use of such technology for marketing purposes has not been explored. That is, the capabilities and advantages of these tools are generally restricted for internal use (i.e., employee designers) while external entities, such as an on-line user, are limited to standard display tools for viewing the products offered by a business. While some businesses offer web-based configuration tools that allow a user to access information on available products on-line, the information provided to the user may be restricted to textual information and limited image data, such as photographs. For example, typical web-based configuration tools may allow a user to configure a product based on limited options presented on a web site. The web site may present limited text-based drop down menus where the customer may select various options that may be associated with an available product, such as when a customer is configuring an automobile at a manufacturer's web site. In such an example, the customer may select among various option packages, models, and colors that are offered by the manufacturer. Once certain options are selected, the user may be presented with a fixed image of a base model automobile in the selected color. Further, the user may be presented with textual information describing limited operating characteristics associated with the configured automobile, such as fuel mileage, torque, horsepower, etc.
Although typical web-based end-user configuration tools provide some level of design configuration to a customer, the information provided is limited. In most instances, a visual presentation is limited to a two dimensional image of a configured product. One reason for the limitations of these configuration tools is the complexity associated with the interrelationship among components in a configured product. Configuring a product for an end user based on components selected by the user may require an enormous amount of text-based information to describe each component. Further, because each component of a product may be related to a plurality of other components, a selection of one component may require limitations in the selection of several other components. Therefore, the more optional components that a customer may select during an on-line configuration process increases the complexity of the information that must be processed. Accordingly, most end-user configuration tools do not provide users with all of the optional components that may be available for a product.
Conventional end-user configuration systems are not only limited in providing a customer with a versatile configuration process, they also lack the ability to update a web-based model for a product based on changes made in the engineering and/or design of the product. Accordingly, an end user may be provided with information for a product that does not include current changes to its design. This may result in lost customers for the product's manufacturer if the missing design change is located by the user on a competitor's product while visiting other web sites.
Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture consistent with certain features of the present invention are directed to solving one or more of the problems set forth above.